


Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

by Miyukitty



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Abandonment, Ambiguous Relationships, Angst and Feels, Blood and Gore, Emotional Baggage, Freeform, Homoromantic, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Pining, Scents & Smells, Self-Harm, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 14:12:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3450074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miyukitty/pseuds/Miyukitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They said his smile was fake, but he didn't know what made theirs any different<br/>When they smiled out of fear, and said they could defeat death</p>
<p>They were afraid of Plegia's monsters – of Validar, of Grima<br/>But they took in Henry all the same, and he was a wolf among Shepherds.<br/>They tried to forget who they killed. He collected body parts as trophies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

**Author's Note:**

> My only motivation for writing this is that I wanted to drabble something experimental and melancholy and I like Henry so?? Why did I do this to myself though gahh ;n; Pretty sure I meant for a happier ending pfff
> 
> This characterization is kind of a blend of Japanese/English Henry, so hopefully he doesn't seem too OOC to US readers… (C'mon you know he's not actually cheerful on the inside, nya ha) SO ENJOY SOME ANGST IN A RAMBLY STREAM FORMAT 
> 
> Referenced a few Grimm fairy tales as well as supports with Lissa, Sumia, Olivia, and Harvest Scramble stuff, but it's mostly Ricken and Little Red Riding Hood >:)

Henry wondered sometimes if Ylissean children heard the same fairy tales as Plegians.

 

He figured probably not.

Because Plegian folktales were morbid and twisted

 

(And Ylisse to the east seemed too pure and noble and shining

To tell their children the greatest honor in life

Would be for the Fell Dragon's jaws to devour them)

But little Henry liked the darker stories better anyway.

 

He was not afraid of monsters and magick

Because Henry lived in a fairy tale where monsters were real

Black magick slumbered in his veins

And his best friend was a big bad _wolf_.

 

Goodness, what big eyes she had;

The better to find a little boy lost and hiding in the forest because his drunken father locked him out (again).

 

And my, what big ears she had;

The better to listen to his muffled sobbing because he was cold and hungry and his harridan mother left bruises (again).

 

And oh, what big teeth she had;

The better to smile the way only a she-wolf can when she brought him food stolen from the village

And warmed him with her fur each night, until her scent meant _home_ instead of the house he came from

And whispered sweet wolf songs to her human cub until he fell asleep.

 

Goodness, what a big heart she had;

Henry held it in his hands after the hunters carved it out of her ribcage

And marveled at how it still beat, feebly, against his fingers

The way he had felt it beating against his own when he slept safely in her embrace for the last time.

 

It got cold, then it stopped.

 

And he was not afraid of monsters

Because he knew he was one

Because he was more animal than boy now, and he had forgotten how to cry

 

So instead he laughed

As he taught the villagers that fairy tales were real, and they should be afraid

 

Of _him_

 

And the black magick they had awoken through their ignorance.

 

He learned he liked the color red and the tang of copper

And the way they screamed right up until they didn't –

 

But his mother and father didn't like it as much as he did.

 

They sent him far away

Forbidden to see his family again.

 

But that was alright. His home was dead, and his parents would have another child

And maybe that one would not be pale and sickly and born _wrong_

And maybe it would not get left in the woods for beasts to claim.

 

* * *

 

 

Henry lived in a new fairy tale then

 

One with cold beds and cold hearts

And boys unwanted and bitter about it, closing off their hearts to the world

Boys taught to feel magick instead of pain

And Henry joined the lost boys with a smile he had learned from a wolf.

 

His body changed in that house; grew taller and leaner, but no less frail

And every mistake meant another bruise, just like mother's love.

 

He collected them so he could watch colors change beneath his skin

His own blossoms of black and blue and yellow in a place where flowers could not grow.

 

He liked watching the red and blue pulse through his slender wrists

And he would play with his veins, sometimes, when he was alone

To see snow-white stained with beautiful stripes of rose-red.

 

And finally, when Gangrel's soldiers came to the house and offered him a way out

Henry followed them obediently (because they smelled of copper)

 

He knew he would meet the grown children of Ylisse on the battlefield

And wondered if he could ask them what their fairy tales were like

Before they stopped screaming.

 

* * *

 

 

War was where Henry fit in.

 

No one told him he was wrong

When he smiled and laughed with cruel intentions

And wove curses inspired by fairy tales

 

Because curses were the kind of magick that gave life to dreams

And his were splitting bellies open and pulling out livers and hearts to feed to crows.

(Henry liked the crows more than the men.)

 

He did as he was told, but he didn't _care_

About politics, patriotism, Risen, Grimleal.

 

They figured it out. They whispered about the silver-haired boy who might kill them in their sleep

And Henry spread whispers of his own just to make things more interesting.

He didn't want the war to end with their king's death. He had nowhere to go afterward.

 

So he betrayed his homeland on a whim

 

Abandoned Plegia in the midst of battle

Defected to Ylisse

Killed Risen for the Exalt.

 

Their world was more fairy tale than his, he thought

Since they had royals, Manakete, Taguel, Pegasi, knights in shining armor

And happily-ever-afters.

 

They said his smile was _fake,_ but he didn't know what made theirs any different

When they smiled out of fear, and said they could defeat death

 

They were afraid of Plegia's monsters – of Validar, of _Grima_

But they took in Henry all the same, and he was a wolf among Shepherds.

They tried to forget who they killed. He collected body parts as trophies.

 

He met a princess with hair like straw spun into gold

And learned she could not sleep because she was surrounded by death. He laughed at this.

 

But he still caught four and twenty blackbirds for the foolish princess

And wrung their tiny necks

To weave a sleeping curse with their essence, because she made a wish and he wanted to grant it

And he couldn't remember what wolf lullabies sounded like.

 

He used his wicked magick designed to reverse a timeline, relive a tragedy,

And used it to repair smashed crockery for that clumsy knight in the mess tent

So that the troops could eat their meager broth that night and keep their strength up for the next day's skirmish.

 

Their world was brighter than his.

It had more colors than he was used to seeing

Even if red was still his favorite.

 

* * *

 

 

Red was the first color he noticed about the boy

 

Who looked to be about his age, except his eyes were younger, softer, kinder

Widened in shock, lips parted to whisper the word

 

_Treason_

 

Henry laughed at him for caring about who the good guys were.

 

He was the son of the big bad wolf, and he would go wherever death went, no matter whose banner flew overhead

And he would only feel a small glimmer of something like happiness when he was painting the fields red

So what did it matter which side he was standing on?

 

Ricken was Ylissean nobility, light and pure, dedicated to his family and country.

He learned the boy's name when they talked after a near-miss on the battlefield.

(Henry didn't really _have_ to save him, but as long as he was wearing sheep's clothing, he might as well help the flock, right?)

 

Ricken smelled like magick tomes and tea leaves and small animals, and Henry liked that part better

So when asked, he didn't mind recounting his time in Gangrel's army

About bags of peaches and birdhouses and the best knitter in Plegia.

 

The second color he noticed about Ricken was white, as his round face blanched and his hands trembled

And his voice stammered thick with remorse.

 

Henry figured out he didn't know how to be friends with a human.

 

Humans didn't tend to like monsters for very long, and he was more interested in the colors of their insides than the words they said.

He talked to others who asked him about hexes and training and where he came from, but he liked spending time with Ricken the best

And he learned he preferred an alive Ricken over a dead Ricken, and that was the closest thing to friendship Henry knew.

 

He followed the mage around camp with a wolfish grin when he had nothing better to play with

And left gifts of food or crow feathers, or once, a trinket stitched out of animal parts

And he laughed at every color Ricken's face turned, queasy green and nervous pale and embarrassed pink.

 

He observed Ricken's potion-making efforts and offered hexes to make him taller and older at the cost of his life force

And was perplexed but amused when the mage quickly declined and scurried away, bottles and notes dropping in his wake.

 

They walked around the harvest festival together, and Henry offered to share his dark magick to make him feel powerful

Took Ricken's hands in his, and let their energies mingle through their palms

And felt connected for just a moment

As the somber pall settled over them both

And someone shared his burden.

 

But Ricken's heart was too pure to accept darkness, and it rebounded with the sting of needles.

Henry learned they were incompatible.

 

He watched Ricken write letters and records by candlelight in his tent

And Henry finally asked if Ylissean children heard the same fairy tales as Plegians

As he crept over on hands and knees and laid his head in the mage's lap, like a tame beast.

 

Ricken's ink-stained fingers stroked gently through silver hair

As he set aside his quill and told a story about a prince who falls in love with a forest maiden.

 

Henry had never heard it before

And he kept interrupting to ask if the forest had wolves, and if the noble had red hair.

It was hard to trust a human, but Henry slept with another heartbeat against his for the first time in years.

 

* * *

 

 

One by one Lucina's comrades swept through camp

And Henry could not smell hope on them, only the tang of dried copper and the scent of death

As they sought out the parents they'd lost in their own time.

 

They were all corrupted by Grima's touch, and they reminded him of that house in Plegia

Severed from family, their hearts closed off

And with the nightmare they survived, he thought they could cast the most beautiful curses.

 

Except one of them

Had familiar red hair

And that one was undeniably Ylissean

And too pure for dark magick.

 

Henry watched Ricken's future child with a smile

 

As he drew delicate lines of rose-red against his snow-white skin

And wondered why the sight of blood didn't cheer him up this time.

 

Wondered what it was that made him feel like he was holding a still-beating heart in his hand

(Again).

 

Instead it was Ricken who found him

Swaying on his feet because he went too deep this time in an attempt to feel it.

 

Ricken who grabbed him by the wrist and yanked back his wet sleeve

Wrapped a clumsy bandage to hide the pretty shades of red from view

And clutched fistfuls of his cape and shook him, pleading, demanding

That it never happen again.

 

Henry would follow orders

 

And Ricken didn't order him to stop when

Henry licked his cheek in a clumsy desperate wolf kiss

 

That ended when Henry's knees buckled, and his pallid face sank into the folds of Ricken's cloak collar

(Where he smelled like tomes and ink and tea and smoke)

 

As Henry thought dazedly that every ounce of his blood belonged to Ricken anyway

Because he would betray anyone without a shred of guilt

Except for Ricken

And he didn't care that they were incompatible.

 

He didn't care that one day in the future Ricken would have a wife and a baby and live happily ever after.

 

Henry would be dead by then.

Huntsmen would carve out his heart.

He hoped someone would appreciate the beauty of that moment.

 

He just wanted Ricken to know that the red of his hair was prettier than the red of blood, and

That meant something to him

 

But he didn't say a word.

 

* * *

 

 

Henry dreamed he could turn into a raven and fly away.

 

When he regained consciousness in the medic's tent

It was the princess, the sleeping beauty, who had healed him with white magick.

 

She scolded him when he laughed off her tears, and called her foolish for crying.

He didn't resist when she hugged him and stroked his hair, though.

He asked Lissa what it felt like to be loved.

 

He didn't remember how to cry so he smiled instead

As she told him he already knew the answer, because he was part of their family

And the Shepherds cared for one another.

 

He had a place here for something other than war

Although war still came first. They had no choice

But to get up when the warning bell clanged throughout camp.

 

Risen were here, and they would be needed in the fray

And Henry gravitated to Ricken's side as if nothing had happened between them.

 

Ricken crossed his arms and puffed up to his full height, looking like a small indignant bird

And Henry laughed at the thought of ruffled feathers

And reached out to ruffle red hair

And Ricken didn't order him not to.

 

Instead he demanded that Henry stay close by

(For safety)

 

And to tell him if he was having morbid thoughts

(As if there was a time when Henry wasn't).

 

Henry smiled

 

As his brutal magick hacked the Risen to pieces

Before they could come anywhere near Ricken

Because Ricken was afraid of monsters, like a good Ylissean.

 

(Ricken was afraid of wolves, too.)

 

And when the skirmish was over, he followed Ricken to his tent

Laid his head faithfully on the boy's lap

And watched him silently record the events in his combat journal.

 

He wondered how many times his own name stained those pages

And if Ricken realized the power he held over this Plegian traitor

Just by stroking his hair and making him feel wanted.

 

Henry didn't ask about the child from the future

He didn't want to know who Ricken would marry after the war

He didn't want the war to end

 

He just wanted to stay in this chapter of the fairy tale

Where the big bad wolf protects his favorite color red

 

And his reward was sharing a heartbeat

 

Until death do them part.


End file.
